What do you do if all your hard work turns out to be in vain?
When the years- No, the decades of hard work amounted to be you grabbing a rotten rope. Climbing it as it's unravels in your hands. Climbing till the last strand rots. Your destiny decided before even your first breath.
I quit school early. There wasn't enough money for tuition in the house, someone had to work and I was the only one who could. Three jobs at once, sometimes four, rarely two. No breaks, no weekends, no hanging out with friends, no place to even think about what to do next. Five years I ran on spite towards the world, channeling my sheer desire to live a better life and using that as fuel. After five years all that was left was fumes. I got diagnosed with a neurological disorder. Hands started shaking, speech slowed, memories faded away, words became hard to join together... I even lost the ability to stand for long periods at a time. I was forced in a desk job. It paid less but I could survive longer, live longer. It was the only thing I could manage. The only thing left for me. Till it too left me. The company downsized. Employees were let go on a large scale. I too had to go. I started writing. I wasn't good at it. So I worked hard to get better. For years I wrote and wrote. The words I wrote were what decided if I could wake up tomorrow. I barely slept. The hunger didn't let me. Sometimes it lasted for a few days. Usually it lasted a few weeks. The longest was a month. I only ate enough to survive. Till my stomach forgot hunger. All that work, all that struggle, all that anguish. Led to this moment.
All my life's work amounted to a 7 sheets of paper stapled together. A contract detailing an offer for an adaptation of my most popular novel.
I lay on my mattress. There was no bedframe, just foam pressed against the floor. My room was a mess. But it wasn't unclean. It was cluttered not with trash but with things I wouldn't throw out. Things that might be useful someday. Things I couldn't afford to buy again just in case. Other than the mattress there was only a small desk in my room. No chair to go along with it. All that was on the desk was mountains of envelopes, unpaid bills and receipts. At the peak of the mountain was a laptop. It was old. The screen covered from error messages I didn't know how to fix. The light from it was the only thing illuminating the room. The light was dim. Cold.
Tabs upon tabs occupied the screen. All searching what I already knew. Questions about the 7 sheets of paper which my life led upto. Questions about it's wording. Questions about the companies nature. Their track record. More and more. The questioning was useless, I already knew what I needed to know.
The contract was awful.
I'd have no creative control. Ownership would transfer to the production company permanently, even if the project failed. No royalties. If the adaptation fell through, I'd have to return the advance. I wouldn't even be allowed to publicly comment on it without running everything through their PR team. They'd also take exclusive adaptation rights to all my other works. And just in case that wasn't enough, they could cancel the contract at any time, and I'd still have to pay everything back.
A contract no sane person would ever sign. Though I wasn't sure if I truly was sane anymore. I was exhausted. I was nearing thirty. I was tired of writing. Tired of having to starve. The money could change my life. It could give me time. It could give me an exit from this life. It could give me a proper meal for a day...
I'm hungry.
I guess I shouldn't think about such an important contract with my stomach. Checking my phone to see the time, I saw it was 6:25. Its the time people come back to home. The nearby convenience store is gonna be packed. I set my phone to silent and I put it back in my pocket. Sighing and exiting my apartment the first thing I noticed was the still air. There was no breeze at all. In fact there was no sound to be found. Not the sound of footsteps, nor the purr of a cat, not even a fly's buzz. There was no one in the roads, at a time where office workers should be rushing home there wasn't even a car on the road. The world felt paused. As if time had come to a standstill. I simply brushed off these thoughts as the ramblings of a hungry man.
My usual store was a convenience store a few minutes away. It was cheap. It was evening, a time at which there should be lots of people picking up snacks on the way home, However there was no one there. Not just customers but there wasn't even a cashier, however with a product fallen on the ground and a paper cup under the drink dispenser it appeared as there was someone there a few seconds ago. Even the cashier's seat has the imprint of someone sitting there for hours. I turned around to look at the streets where a couple office workers are usually returning home However it was the same as the store, not even a car passing by.
The fluorescent light above me blinking on and off, no sound of anything living nearby, then...
--Ding!--
A notification on my phone, I pulled it out of my pocket as I stepped outside the convenience store, Wondering how I forgot to put it on silent I turned my phone on. My phone was on silent. The only notifications on my phone were a notification for an app finished installing. The app name seemed to be unreadable, I could tell it was in English however I could not tell what it said. As I squinted trying to make out the notification I received another notification. An email about an adaptation of my novel.
I opened it quickly, unlike the previous contract this one was only about one novel, my first novel. I questioned what they saw in that old mess of a novel I wrote, in which I didn't even bother writing proper names and just stole the names of fictional characters. The offer in the email was an adaptation inspired by my first novel not a direct adaptation. I read the email over and over again. The more I read the more confused I became, the email sending this was an email for a studio which I'd had never heard of. Moreover they never mentioned what the adaptation was, whether it was a game, show or a webcomic. No other details were mentioned, just one line that said to give consent and say "accept" above 20 decibels. The contract was purely bizzare. After a few moments passed, it hit me. It was a prank. I had my hopes up for nothing. It was most likely that stalker's prank.
I sighed. Sliding the phone back into my pocket. And as if wanting to believe this fairy tale contract I mumbled a word.
"Accept"
The word had barely escaped from my lips before a sudden searing pain originated from my chest. Like a snake binding around me, stealing my breath, a tightness like every drop of blood in my body was being violently vacuumed out. My heart beating slower and slower, stuttering and pausing frequently, it's rythym the last sounds I heard. My vision dimming and blurring, the world felt more and more distant as I fell onto the gravel road. Collapsing without grace or sound, a puppet with severed strings, my eyes slowly closing like curtains at the end of a play.
I died.